Last year Michael Caine won it. This year it could be one Dave Johns who claims the top acting prize in the European film awards next weekend. His starring role in I, Daniel Blake has taken him and everyone else involved on quite a journey. Clinching the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival was only the start for this remarkable film. Now Johns is having to fit in his regular work as a stand-up comic in the North East with requests for interviews from all over the globe. Not to mention dusting off the DJ for those award ceremonies.

It’s not bad for a low budget film that’s a fairly straightforward tale of hard up folk struggling to get by. But for Johns that’s the whole point: the characters are very ordinary people. ‘It could be your daughter, your sister, your grandkids,’ he says. For him that’s where the power of the film lies and why it has struck such a chord with audiences in the UK and internationally.

The whole shebang got started when Johns heard that director Ken Loach was looking for someone to play a 59-year-old Newcastle joiner having a tough time with the benefits system. He had done some acting before and loved it. So he was determined to give this his best shot – and he got the part. There was no chance to research it though: Loach shoots his films in the same sequence as the story unfolds. The actors got the next section of scripts each day on set. So the shock and bewilderment on Daniel’s face as he confronts each Kafkaesque twist at the Jobcentre is pretty authentic. ‘Each day you are living the life of Daniel as it’s revealed to him more and more.’ In fact, says Johns, researching the benefit system beforehand might have blunted that honest reaction.

The film tracks Daniel Blake’s attempt to claim Employment and Support Allowance after a heart attack – but he has to wait until a ‘decision maker’ decides. He is advised to claim Jobseeker’s Allowance in the meantime but can’t take up any jobs because his doctor says he’s not well enough. At the same time, lone parent Katie (played by Hayley Squires) feels marooned in Newcastle after moving there from a homeless hostel – her London local authority cannot find her and her two kids permanent accommodation. Some of the scenes in the film are reminiscent of what participants in our own research told us. Some lone parents, for example, described going without food themselves in order to feed their children.

Johns’s education in the ways of ESA began when Loach gave him a 52 page application form and told him to fill it in. He couldn’t. That was an awakening for a man who last claimed unemployment benefits in the 1970s.

‘Can you imagine if you’re disabled and they present you with this form and you have to fill it in right. Getting that wrong would mean any money you had to live on would be stopped,’ he says. ‘That was my first inkling. I didn’t know that sanctions were like that. Daniel believes there’s a system to help him.’

Across the years, Johns found, there have been big changes in that system. ‘They make it so difficult and so hard now that basically I think it’s to make people give up. I think they set it up so that people will say, “I’m not going to pay into a system so that these lazy people can lie about and be shirkers.” It’s got into the psyche of people.’

In the film we see Daniel and Katie struggling to deal with a bureaucratic system that wears them down to the point of feeling shame and desperation. The experience of filming that journey has left Johns fired up with outrage. First, he nails the way the system pushes responsibility back on to the individual recipient.

‘It’s like you are guilty until proven otherwise. The idea that if you haven’t paid in life the only person who’s at fault is you. And because it’s your fault, they don’t have to do anything about it. If it’s the system at fault they’d have to change it.’

Despite the many reported cases of similar situations, some have criticised the film, pointing out that it is fiction or saying it is exaggerated. Johns is having none of that. He points out the extensive research by Loach and writer Paul Laverty. People working on the film included ex-Jobcentre staff, and foodbank volunteers told the stories of those scenes, he insists.

He believes that benefit recipients have been unfairly portrayed in the public mind as scroungers. ‘I don’t know any father or mother who would want to take their children to a food bank. To get free food – the indignity of that. And people who are working hand the money to private landlords, and they have nothing left at the end of the week. You can’t tell me that anybody wants to live like that.

‘When we showed this film all over Europe, people in France, Italy and Spain came to us and said this is happening in our countries too, that the most vulnerable people are being targeted for cuts.’

If that sounds angry, it is. Johns has had a wake-up call himself and wants to seize this chance to alert others. He was never political before, he says, but he certainly is now. ‘As you get into it more and more, it does change you. Ken Loach has radicalised us!’

He wants to see the UK return to having a ‘proper’ safety net. ‘We should be proud that we have a benefits system and a national health service because we can all be in that position, it just needs a couple of bad things to happen in your life.’

And of course wildly unexpected good things can happen too. I, Daniel Blake has made the explosive leap from indie film to international event. Johns got out the suit again last weekend for another awards ceremony: this time the UK Independent Film Awards where he won Best Actor. ‘When I made this film last year I never dreamt of where it’s taken us. I’m very proud,’ he says.

‘I think every now and then in your life and your career you want to have some kind of creative moment. I can be proud of this because it is making people aware that the system needs to be revised, and that we need to stop demonising the people who are at the bottom of the ladder.’

The European Film Awards takes place in Poland on Saturday 10 December

Conference

Latest Comments

You also have an exact and clear idea of how all this affects people who are actually caught up in it. Unfortunately, the people who are responsible for these policies and decisions have never had to deal with it so there is no understanding and no empathy. We are losing our humanity in today's society.

Why would people then bother to make a home and spend money on it? We have to get away from this mindset that has now taken hold that Social Housing.....hate that term, is just temporary to suit your immediate needs. People should not have to up sticks all the time because a child gets older etc. When the old system was in place ie older people with larger homes than they needed they were offered incentives to downsize. In the 90's more Older peoples accommodation was built. Bungalows, Sheltered Housing etc. People were given help with removal costs. This has all changed. To make someone move from a home they have been in for years is cruel if it is not voluntary. I have been in my home since it was built. My daughter moved out as she should when grown up to make her own home. So after 23 years with roots well and truly down, should I be made to move? I have my granddaughter to stay. My daughter's room is now for her and was also an office when I worked from home. I could not fit my home into a small 1 bedroom flat. I do not want people living above me. This idea that if you live in Social Housing it is just accommodation but if you own it is your home is totally wrong. My parents moved willingly into Sheltered Housing but the change affected them drastically. My dad became stressed and ill and died a year later and my mother never settled and died a few years later. This was because they uprooted themselves and left their home and all the memories and familiar surroundings. Unfortunately like most issues these days, the humanity is being taken out of it.

Great resources on linking welfare sanction and conditionally and key social policy considerations with human rights principles (including dignity, non-discrimination). These considerations have a huge impact in narratives around poverty and vulnerability, and should be closely looked at by policy decision-makers and street-level bureaucrats.

Ok. I don’t agree with the bedroom tax but I do feel it would be a better option if housing rules were changed. For example why do they wait until kids are over 10 until giving families two bedrooms?
Then I also think housing should be fit for purpose so I believe when they move someone from a one bedroom to a 2 or 3 it should be with the understanding only until the children grow up and leave home then they should have their Tennancy moved back to something more suitable again like a one bedroom.

A fine well written and clear example of what is broken in our welfare system.
They are asking for submission for the next select committee meeting on welfare and I would submit this post if it were my choice.
It is a vicious cycle for some who have no chance of finding work however hard they might try. It is the employers who ultimately make the decision if employees are fit and ready to work, not the DWP.
Having a budget of £2 per day for food , job searching activities, keeping your appearance and strength up, and having to jump through hoops and tick boxes on all those strength zapping, soul destroying schemes courses and programs that do nothing but heap yet even more pressure and stress.
The affects of stress on both mental and physical health are well documented and nothing can be more stressful than not knowing week in, week out, that your hand to mouth existence is constantly at risk.
Sanctions are death sentences for some, no getting away from that fact, those charged with administrating the regime should hang their heads in shame, it is those who should make the stand to bring about change.
Or do they deceive themselves into believing long time shirker Jim who they sanctioned last month and who has not been seen again at the local JCP, Is now enjoying the fruits of his labor thanks to the Works Coaches helpful push they so desperately needed.
So clearly sanctions work and a good done job done by me, high five everyone.